How Sociopaths hurt people around them

Sociopaths do hurt people around them and this is a fact of life, which I think that is foolish to deny. I am not going to talk here about the low-life sociopaths that manipulate people for material gains, because the matter has been rather extensively and correctly covered elsewhere. The material gains is only one of the many scenarios that happen. Also I am not going to talk about the sociopath as a child situation. I want to talk about the sociopathic spouse, or a sociopathic partner, who did not want anything tangible scenarios. 

Such situations lead to long-term emotional scars that sociopaths leave their "victims" with. Though, cases are different, there is a key factor that can be seen throughout all of them: Sociopaths do not "live up" to the expectations/needs that their partner or the society places upon them. Sociopaths may strongly reinforce these expectations by being rather successful at displaying the sexual behaviors that are common to normal humans. But, as often is the case, they may fail to sustain these behaviors over prolonged periods. Sociopaths are really good and convincing at delivering what is expected of them at the moment, but in the long term they ultimately fail. It is important to note that many of these expectations/needs are deeply rooted in human biology, thus not fulfilling them happens to hurt people around them very deeply. I want to go through some of these expectations/needs, how they work and how/why sociopaths fail to deliver.

• Lack of bonding and emotional feedback. Humans among other social animals have a range of mechanisms that are designed to bond people within a group or two people together. These typically include emotional feedback to the actions and worries of other people. This feedback could be expressed in body language, physical contact, trivial conversations and empathy in general. For a sociopath such activities clearly lack purpose and consequently they fail to deliver. This is often seen as being "cold" or "callous". But regardless, such communication is immensely important for normal humans and not receiving it is very confusing. When all the bonding efforts of a person turn out to be in vain, it hurts them a lot.
• Inability to empathise with emotional or physical pain. From my experience, it is next to impossible for a normal person to understand, how it is that you do not feel anything when the other person is hurting. In such situations one is expected to show some sort of an emotional reaction, but a sociopath will remain "cold" and rational throughout, being unable to soothe the person in pain. Not receiving comfort is a situation when it is expected, hurts people a lot. A sociopath will understand the concept of such pain,  but the attempts to soothe the pain may appear to be insincere, further aggravating the situation.
• Being overly secretive about everything. Sociopaths do not like talking about their past or sharing what is important to them, or sharing at all. This is deeply rooted in the childhood trauma that many sociopaths have. Such sharing is a part of emotional bonding, and not doing that may be seen as a sign of distrust. Sometimes people would expect to be provided access to cellphones or personal computers, but a sociopath may see it as an intrusion of privacy and be very vocal about not doing it, even if there is nothing "bad" to be found. Such actions will facilitate distrust and ultimately hurt people.
• Being distant/needing unusual amounts of personal space. As I mentioned earlier, a sociopath may need some extra personal space, when compared to other people. This make take form in shutting the world off via movies or games, or avoiding physical contact or conversations. Such actions at the times when their partner needs attention and bonding will surely lead to hurt feelings.
• Lying and deceptive actions. There are things that people want to hear and that one is supposed to say or do in certain scenarios, for the relationship to "work". It may be along the lines of empathy, one's feelings, or one's life plans and goals. So, if a sociopath wants to have a relationship with someone he or she likes, a certain degree of lying may be required. Some lie more successfully and others less so, but this will surely cause backlash sooner or later. In truth, the sociopaths do not seriously believe that "living happily together ever after" is a viable possibility. This is due to a plethora of reasons, that I described in the Relationships post.
• Breaking contact and disappearing for periods of time. Everybody wants to be alone at times, but sociopaths may need it more than others. As I described it in the Relationships post, sociopaths do feel varying degrees of discomfort, when around people. Sometimes they just want to "get away from it all". The problem here is that the situation would seem to have come "out of nowhere" to the other person, because they will not feel any tension building up in their partner. One day everything was fine and the next day he or she is gone or isolated themselves. These behaviors and their seeming irrationality seem to hurt people a lot.
•  Isolating their partner from friends and family. Sociopaths may feel highly uncomfortable when around other people. That is why they may refuse to take part in various group activities like family meetings, parties gatherings, picnics et c. Ultimately this may lead to the situation when their partner will have to choose between them and their friends and families. Whatever the choice, the partner may feel guilty before the other party. This will result in negative emotions and contribute to the negative atmosphere overall. Especially if this situation hurts other relationships, which it may.

This is not a complete list of all of the drawbacks of being with a sociopath. I understand that it is a scary one and it is clearly not for everybody. I've met people who could deal with all of this, but it came at a hefty price.

Sociopath at a Workplace; Hiring a Sociopath

Here I am going to discuss the "successful sociopath" types, who are distinctly different from sociopaths with a criminal record and/or manifestations of antisocial behavior. Much of the research on Psychopathy/Sociopathy that is available and hits the mainstream, has been and is being performed within the penal system, and, in my view, is not representative of the people with sociopathy in general. As each case of sociopathy is unique, and there being a spectrum to it, the most noticeable part of the spectrum is those sociopaths with clear antisocial manifestations. But many sociopaths lead lives without any negative impact for anyone.

When it comes to employment, an important stereotype that needs to be addressed is that "Sociopaths are always disruptive to the groups that they are in". This may be somewhat true in some short-term engagements, because meeting and getting along with new people is very stressful for a sociopath for the reasons described here. But in the long-term engagements, the workplace becomes some sort of a home for a sociopath, and he or she would not do anything to disrupt that, and, furthermore, would take action to ensure stability, often becoming a key factor in maintaining it.

Another important factor as to why sociopaths could contribute towards long-term stability is that they are largely incapable of and would oppose any discrimination and exclusion based on age, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and identity. Pretty much, merit is the only factor that a sociopath would consider relevant for evaluating a subordinate. Having said that, a sociopathic person would have a distinct set of strengths and weaknesses that may be relevant for his or her employers. I will try to name those  and scenarios where they may either useful or detrimental:

• Firstly, if the company is in need to sell some BS convincingly, a sociopath is the obvious top choice to do it, due to personal charisma and presentation skills.
• Having very strong "emotional intelligence" a.k.a. people skills, a sociopath may be good at creating appropriate motivation schemes and ensuring retention of key personnel. Cross-departmental collaboration will also likely be on point. On the other hand, if the corporate culture is weak and internal politics is a thing within the company, then a sociopath may take advantage of that to increase personal standing.
• A sociopath is likely to be a very hard negotiator. Being able to deal out some serious BS himself, selling BS to a sociopath may be an exercise in futility. Also, having some deep insight into the motivation of everybody at the table, a sociopath will negotiate with the people, present, rather than the company that they represent, leading to higher success rates of negotiations.
• Sociopaths would tend to show high resilience in a wide array of work-related conflict situations, which may be stressful to other people. I.e., a sociopath would not take personally a heated discussion over budget allocations and maintain a neutral and logical position throughout, and mediate such a discussion, should it get stuck over personal animosities of those at the table.
• Being rather analytical, a sociopath will probably be able to make some rather inciteful reports  and think of efficient courses of actions, which may miss other people.
• A major limitation of hiring a sociopath is creatine a motivation scheme that would actually work. It should be rather fair and be aimed at promoting the qualities that you would want him to exhibit.

But, in the end, it is up to you to make the decision, whether hiring a sociopath is worth the trouble...

Living with a sociopathic child or the child of a sociopath. Some advice for parents.

Living with a sociopathic child is a lifelong endeavor, that can be a major stress and sorrow both for the parent, and the child alike. There are many elements that contribute to this: failing to understand each other leading to the lack of trust; the child being the constant reminder of how his or her sociopathic parent acted; and the actions of the child himself, which may cause some social problems for the parent. I will try to sum up my thoughts on the natures of these problems, and try to give some advice to the parent.

Firstly, nobody is born a devious manipulating “monster” that grown-up sociopaths typically are. These are the things that a sociopath learns during childhood. And these traits won’t really change once into adulthood. There is no way that you will be able to “therapy the child to love you”, the results will likely be the exact opposite. We are dealing with a biological condition here. Dealing with the situation, solely relies on the level of trust that you will be able to establish with a sociopathic child. You will have to be able to position yourself as an ally, rather than another enemy – and go from there. I firmly believe, that the potential negative impact of the sociopath on the people that he will meet in his life, as well as harm to self, can be really decreased via parent activity. So, I will try to give some background info on causes of problems, as I see them, and some possible things to do.

The childhood of a sociopath sucks on many levels (sorry, no other way to put it). A sociopath would likely come from a household that is dysfunctional on some level: with being abandoned or neglected by the father as the most common case. Not being able to form social bonds naturally, a sociopathic child would likely be bullied at school. Sociopaths can't comprehend and are incapable of violence without a clear tangible purpose, so the reasons for them being bullied would completely escape them.

As sociopaths can't naturally form in their minds a cause and effect relationship between doing something that is perceived by others as bad and receiving a negative stimulus, they don't respond to punishment normally. Any punishment that they may receive is seen as an act of senseless aggression. And furthermore, as the person delivering the punishment would not see a normal emotional feedback, they are more likely to intensify punishment in hopes to incite this feedback. But a sociopath is simply incapable of such a feedback and this situation may well spiral out of control. And as the positive stimuli don't really work either, such a child is likely to get totally demotivated, leading to study problems and delinquency. Forcing such a child to apologize for something or demand remorse from him or her is also seen as an act of emotional violence.

Having essentially the same emotional needs as any child, dealing with all of this may be very hard and consequently sociopaths are suicidal and are very likely to inflict some form of self-harm. Such a child is likely to adopt very early a mindset of "the whole world is against me" and will be very hesitant to ask anyone for help and always try to rely only on him or herself. This in turn may lead to petty crimes, as doing so may seem as the only reasonable way of getting something they may need.

So, what do you do? Some things may be hard to swallow, but I hope you give it a shot. I’ll try to sum up some of things that worked or did not for the cases that I know of:

·       A sociopathic child absolutely needs a “safe zone” to get away from all the stuff that is going on in his life. So some place that nobody can enter, unless invited by him is absolutely critical. By doing that you will appear as an ally, who understands him.

·       You need to make it crystal-clear that you will not punish him for whatever he does, or for what other people say he did. This goes double for school: you should absolutely disregard his grades. If you are to come to a parent-teacher conference, and whatever they say, take the child for some ice cream. And pretend that you do not care about whatever. That is how you get trust and instill the sense of security.

·       The only goal for going to school for the sociopathic child is to attempt to socialize. But that would be the source of constant grief for the child because of many reasons. Social acceptance is one of the biggest issues at that age. So giving him some tools to help out with this would make sense. You should buy something that he can share with kids: something that they like. I am not talking about the new iPhone or a PSP, but something cool for group activities, like board games or whatever the kids play together with these games. So getting a crowd around him would help a lot with his self-esteem. I am unconvinced about hobby clubs’ merit, but this may surely work if the child is the one to choose it: so give him some options to choose from.

·       Moral/ethical issues. “Normal” ethics and rules and religious commands simply do not apply to such a child. Although it may seem otherwise, sociopaths are born extremely rational and logical. And they will have problems doing something or following rules that do not seem logical to them. The only thing that would apply is the internal moral code that many sociopaths actually have. One way to go around this is explain to the logic behind some important rules. I.e. lying to neighbors may be beneficial in the short term, but is detrimental in the long term, because when you would need something important, you would not get it.

·       Understanding the motivations. As I wrote above, sociopaths are extremely logical and rational. They won’t do anything without a clear purpose/goal in mind. I.e. the purpose of saying mean things to you or lying is to get you off their backs or avoiding immediate punishment. And they world typically know exactly why they did what they did. If you are even somewhat successful with points 1-4, you should be able to ask motivational questions directly. Though I would recommend that you do it in the most unemotional and logical way possible. Such questions could be: “What was the purpose/goal of you doing XX? Why doing that was important to you? What other options of getting what you needed did you consider? Why did you think that acting the way that you did was the best way to do it? et c.”

This the post too long already. So if you have questions on this, I’ll follow up.

The Life of a Psychopath

Let's face it: a Sociopath a.k.a. Psychopath typically lives in a world that is very hostile.

The childhood of a sociopath sucks on many levels (sorry, no other way to put it). A sociopath would likely come from a household that is dysfunctional on some level: with being abandoned or neglected by the father as the most common case. Sociopathy is highly hereditary and the odds of a sociopath having a sociopath for a parent are very high. Not being able to form social bonds naturally, a sociopathic child would likely be bullied at school. Sociopaths can't comprehend and are incapable of violence without a clear tangible purpose, so the reasons for them being bullied would completely escape them.

As sociopaths can't naturally form in their minds a cause and effect relationship between doing something that is perceived by others as bad and receiving a negative stimulus, they don't respond to punishment normally. Any punishment that they may receive is seen as an act of senseless aggression. And furthermore, as the person delivering the punishment would not see a normal emotional feedback, they are more likely to intensify punishment in hopes to incite this feedback. But a sociopath is simply incapable of such a feedback and this situation may well spiral out of control. And as the positive stimuli don't really work either, such a child is likely to get totally demotivated, leading to study problems and delinquency. Forcing such a child to apologize for something or demand remorse from him or her is also seen as an act of emotional violence.

Having essentially the same emotional needs, dealing with all of this may be very hard and consequently sociopaths are suicidal and are very likely to inflict some form of self harm. Such a child is likely to adopt very early a mindset of "the whole world is against me" and will be very hesitant to ask anyone for help and always try to rely only on him or herself. This in turn may lead to petty crimes as doing so may seem as the only reasonable way of getting something they may need. A sociopath will not commit crime or cause any physical or emotional harm for fun.

Well, if a sociopath reaches adulthood alive and without a criminal record, it may become a whole different story. Though carrying a massive baggage of childhood trauma, a sociopath is likely to have a set of natural traits to be successful in life. By adulthood, a sociopath may have acquired emotional intelligence/people skills on an unparallelled level. This manifests in charisma and an ability to understand emotions and motivations of others. The analytical and decision making processes for a sociopath are largely unaffected by emotions, allowing to make objective risk assessments and decisions even in the situations that would be very stressful for other people. And there are many jobs out there where these capabilities are key.

As for the personal life of an adult sociopath, it is likely to still be pretty miserable. I discuss the reasons for this here. My personal way of dealing with this generally is honesty and transparency. As sociopathy actually is a medical condition with clear biological causes, I would tell those, who may be affected by my condition, about what my condition is, what it means, how to treat me in different situations, what to expect and, more importantly, what to not expect of me in different scenarios. I know, this approach is not for everyone with this condition. As for the success rate of people actually knowingly accepting me, it is fairly good at around 25%. On the other hand, I clearly understand, that being close to me may weigh hard on people, so I try to accommodate to the extent possible. But acting in an open manner has been generally worthwhile for me. At least I have the peace of mind, if not all of the relationships that I wanted.

Psychopaths and Relationships

Contrary to the popular belief, many Sociopaths a.k.a. Psychopaths do want and need meaningful relationships. Sociopaths are human and have the same basic human needs of being accepted socially and personally. The problem being that such relationships are exceptionally difficult to maintain. There are several reasons for this: emotional and physiological in nature.

The primary reason being the discomfort that a sociopath may feel when other people are close to him or when there are people inside his "safe zone" at home or work. All the sociopaths that I know, including myself, experience various degrees of discomfort when around other people. The degree of discomfort tends to increase the closer those people are, culminating with immediate family, relatives, roommates and love partners. The discomfort may be very intense, up to the point of experiencing pain and revulsion at physical contact. Though, if there is sufficient personal space available, this discomfort may be at a tolerable level and manageable even in the long term. This discomfort may manifest in sociopath being irritable or reserved. Importantly, whatever happens in the relationship, a sociopath is extremely unlikely to display any physical violence - even much less likely than a normal person. Sociopaths do not commit "crimes of passion" because their capabilities to have strong emotions such like rage are very limited.

Secondly, the abnormalities in the orbitofrontal cortex of sociopaths affect the processing of certain stimuli. Particularly this concerns processes relating to empathy, leading to sociopaths being viewed as "cold" or "callous". Empathy itself is extremely important for the human species and is the key component upon which the bonding within social groups and between people occurs. Within relationships emotional feedback tends to be very important for the relationships to be stable. But these are the things that a sociopath may be completely incapable of. Unlike many autists, sociopaths can clearly perceive normal social interactions and understand what is required for such interactions to occur.

This in fact creates the biggest problem in the life of a sociopath. Though a sociopath may desire a normal and meaningful relationship, the sociopath lacks the natural tools for it to happen at the most basic biological level. To deal with this sociopaths exclude themselves from the society as much as possible and imitate the responses they think that expected of them in the setting that they are in. As sociopathy is something that one is born with and being perceptive by nature, it is very likely that by adulthood, a sociopath may be exceptionally good simulating the required responses. But this task is very demanding in terms of energy.

So, in order to fulfill the natural human desire to be accepted socially and personally, a sociopath is often required to use tools that are frowned upon by the society at large or even deemed immoral by many people. When it comes to relationships, the choices actually available to a sociopath are pretty bad and have major drawbacks: to be excluded from the society or to simulate the required responses.  On the other hand, it seems to be difficult for normal people to understand this situation and the real motivation behind the deemed "deception" if it comes to light.  So, to put this lightly, misunderstandings happen.

What is a Psychopath/Sociopath

Firstly, and most importantly, we are talking about a medical condition, which is biological in nature and a condition that is already present at birth and will affect the person throughout his life. Nobody chooses to be a sociopath, and typically it is not something that one develops later in life, though it may manifest itself to other people at any age. There is no viable "cure" or treatment for this condition, especially past childhood. This condition has very many similarities with autism, which people seem to be more aware of and should be regarded quite similarly.

Sociopathy is characterised by certain abnormalities in the orbitofrontal cortex of the brain. These abnormalities cause certain stimuli to be processed differently, leading to the observable differences in behavior. The affected areas, among others, are primarily connected to social interactions like empathy and reactions to punishment, as well as the feeling of remorse. According to many of the researchers the condition is highly hereditary. I would recommend to read up on this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy

Secondly, Sociopathy is not a uniform condition, with each case being unique. There are differences in empathy levels between sociopaths, whether antisocial or violent tendencies will manifest or not, stress tolerance levels et c. Similarly to Autism, there is a spectrum to sociopathy. There have been numerous attempts to create a system for classifying and rating sociopathy. The most prevalent approach is the Psychopathy Checklist, Revised (PCL-R), created by Robert D. Hare. Though, since much of the research and statistics on the topic have been done within the penal system, they tend to be more focused around the more severe cases: people with manifested antisocial tendencies and and clear existing problems with integration into the society. This further contributes to the public's misunderstanding of the topic

At the same time, many of the sociopaths integrate into the society successfully and display no antisocial behaviors. Those people have hardly been studied, and the awareness of their condition and the challenges they are facing in their everyday lives is virtually non existent.